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Specter, Frist Head for Stem-Cell Showdown:
by Margaret Carlson

July 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and Majority Leader
Bill Frist are headed for a showdown. But it's not over President George
W. Bush's first Supreme Court nominee, as I expected back when Frist
temporarily held up Specter's rise to Judiciary Committee chairman for
being too moderate.

No, the confrontation that's looming is over something close to Specter's
heart, his stem-cell bill. Co-sponsored with Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, the
bill would override Bush's ban on federal funding of stem-cell research
that uses frozen embryos, a prohibition that has stymied research into
cures for the incurable.

The bill looked as if it would sail through the Senate as easily as it
passed the House. That was before conservatives threw up a roadblock in
the form of competing bills proposing methods of creating new stem-cell
lines that don't involve the destruction of embryos.

There's no evidence those methods will yield stem cells anytime soon.
What they will yield is a safe harbor for some senators who would have
voted for the Specter bill.

More Studies

The Frist substitutes for the Specter bill offer a haven for those
Senators who want to support Frist and the president, but not risk the
ire of a majority of Americans, who've come to feel almost as strongly in
favor of expanding stem-cell lines as the minority does in opposing it.

Leon Kass, head of the President's Commission on Bioethics, whose
position is always to drop-kick the embryo problem for more studies by
more committees, has weighed in and found the unproven methods
``encouraging.'' If Frist gets his way these untested processes will
prove successful in stopping Specter's bill.

Last week, Specter fought back at hearings and a press conference
attended by Michael J. Fox, who has been the famous face on the battle to
get more money for research into Parkinson's disease.

But Specter, who has been battling Hodgkin's disease, is his own draw
now. Never weaker physically, never stronger mentally, Specter says he is
propelled out of bed each day by his work and by the hundreds of letters
he's received from patients who await a cure for the now incurable.

The Hourglass

His former chief of staff, David Urban, calls his former boss the Lance
Armstrong of the Senate. ``If you close your eyes and don't look at his
bald head and gaunt cheeks but just listen to him, you'd think he was a
well man at the height of his powers,'' Urban says.

At the press conference with Fox, Specter placed an hourglass on the
table, Urban says, to remind us we don't have forever on this bill. Frist
has got to bat down what he calls these 11th-hour ``stalking-horse
alternatives,'' which might work someday but not now.

Before Specter turned the microphone over to other speakers, he asked for
a personal moment to make the point that if the country had waged the
full-fledged war against cancer President Richard Nixon pledged, there
might be a cure for the lymphoma ravaging him today. He doesn't want the
same thing to happen to cures for diseases awaiting stem-cell research.

Specter may be weak physically, but Frist enters this fight crippled by
his own mistakes. Stung by a string of mistakes, miscalculations and
transparent pandering, he's made some members wax nostalgic for the good
old days under Trent Lott, who wasn't distracted by dreams of being
president.

Bet on Specter

Earlier this year, Frist was unilaterally disarmed by Senator John
McCain, who stole seven Republicans to form the Gang of 14, taking
Frist's ``nuclear option'' on filibusters off the table for the time
being. He couldn't get a vote on the floor on John Bolton's nomination as
ambassador to the United Nations. Aware Republicans had gone too far on
Terri Schiavo, he went on ``Good Morning America'' to claim he hadn't
diagnosed the Florida woman by videotape. Problem was there was a
videotape showing him doing just that.

Frist didn't look like much of a leader last week when he tried to
pre-empt the Democrats' empty threat to remove Karl Rove's security
clearance (for being the source of Valerie Plame's outing as a CIA agent)
with his own. He introduced an amendment to an unrelated bill to strip
Senator Dick Durbin and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of their
security clearances.

The Senate hadn't seen such hand-to-hand combat since Frist broke with
the body's traditional courtesy to take off for South Dakota and
personally campaign against former Senator Tom Daschle. Frist's amendment
was defeated, with 20 Republicans voting against it.

Although Frist controls the Senate, my money's on Specter. To Frist, who
favored more stem-cell research before changing his mind to comport with
Bush's stance, this is not a matter of life and death. Specter has
conservatives like Senators Orrin Hatch and Gordon Smith and Ted Stevens
with him. Specter's going to get this passed, if it's the last thing he
does.



To contact the writer of this column:
Margaret Carlson at  [log in to unmask]
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_carlson
&sid=aRy8H_130tWA#

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